Organizations are groups of people who work closely together with an aim to attain some purpose i.e. they have a collective sense of purpose. Behavior, on the other hand, is the response of a person or people to an action, environment, an individual or a specific event. Organizational behavior is the study of how staff members of the organization think, respond, act and feel within the confines of the organization (Stone & Marsden, 2001). Workplace practices influence prospective of human capital. Human capital entails workers skills; knowledge and other abilities that provide competitive advantage by helping uncover opportunities and reduce threats. The study of organization’s behavior is important as it quenches the need to comprehend, and predict behavior trends in a company, influence the behavior by getting things done the way you want and accommodate everyone in the organization and improve organization’s financial wellbeing. Also, organizational effectiveness is the crucial dependent variable in organization behavior. If improper approach is employed to formulate and achieve the stated goals, problems will arise with goals attainment. The problems may range from easy unhelpful goals to the company achieving wrong goals. The case study on Hickling Associates highlights numerous issues covered in the organizational behavior class. Some of the concerns discussed in the case study include work-life balance, employee motivation, employee ability, role perceptions, employee ability, and role perceptions. Additional issues include feedback, job satisfaction and exhaustion.
I. Work-life balance
Work-life balance is one of the main issues highlighted in the case study. According to the case study, Mr. Hickling is an accomplished business person but he does not implement policies that promote work-life balance in the organization. His commitment to his job creates work-life balance issues in various ways. First of all, the employees in the organization do not have a program that may promote their mental health. They spend most of the time at the organization working for the sake of recording exemplary results. However, they are risking their health because they are not focusing on balancing between their work and personal lives. Work-life balance is a vital aspect of employee productivity because it gives employees the opportunity to rejuvenate their replenished efforts. The company should put in place policies that will balance the work life of employees and their personal lives. The company should consider introducing health and training programs so that employees can break from work and pursue a good lifestyle.
II. Employee motivation
Tony Azzara is the main focus of the article and his experiences in different organizations reveal the issue of employee motivation. In his initial position, Tony was offered a comprehensive pay package consisting of medical insurance, salary and car benefits. The aim of such benefits was to motivate Tony to maximize his performance. The benefits and pay packages reveal the financial gain is among the greatest motivating factors within organizations. In most cases, employees are attracted to the job position because of the perks attached to the job. Additionally, a working environment and organizational culture also play a role in the motivation process. Throughout the case study, organizations have focused on financial motivations. However, the success of the firm relies on how well it combines monetary and non-monetary gains as instruments of motivation. Therefore, the organizations should focus on non-monetary motivations such as job promotions and job security. For instance, Tony has a short temper, and this elicits fear of dismissal from work.
III. Human resource skills
Staff's skills are also a central theme in the case study. The case study highlights the impact of employee ability on the success of various organizations. For instance, Tony Azzara started out as an employee at Pisces Exporters Ltd. At the age of 27 years, Tony started his career as a salesperson at Pisces Exporters. He recognized his abilities as a salesperson and set out to become a successful salesperson for his company. The company recognized his abilities and assigned him more responsibilities as a sales manager in charge of sea-food exports to Europe. The firm sort his services on the rationale of his skills to drive sales to the organization. Tony expanded the operations of the company to new markets such as Asia because he was able to spot opportunities that could benefit the business.
Organizations can enhance employee ability through training. Tony was an aggressive sales person thus Pisces Exporters should have offered on-job training to enhance his abilities as a salesperson. In another case, Tony gets another job at Hickling, and he struggles to fit in because he is getting a different treatment. Hickling has a romantic view of leadership because the success and failure of the company are dependent on the actions of Mr. Hickling. Initially, Mr. Hickling recognizes the ability of Tony in the sea-food business. Instead of showing support, Mr. Hickling ignores Tony’s contributions to the success of the organization. It is important that organizations appreciate the abilities of their employees to maximize output.
The company could have created a performance evaluation system consisting of the following elements.
The general excellence and quantity of the input: value is the measure of the level of sustaining continuous and consistent high product and services standards. The discharge of any individual employee depends on how much his efforts improve customer satisfaction and company overall productivity. This is a reliable criterion because it is easily measurable and comparable among workers in a similar position. The criterion is measured by comparing the number and impact of completed tasks.
Time frame of the work: organizations base their performance on the speed they accomplish their tasks. A worker who completes tasks of the organization in the shortest time possible enjoys high performer status. Completing tasks in the shortest time possible saves the organization on costs and reduces bureaucracy within the organization (Schermerhorn, 2012). Time can be easily measured in terms of the number of days and hours a task takes to complete.
The cost- saving benefits the organization will accrue: the key objective for any enterprise is reducing on costs and maximizing on benefits. Performance evaluation should focus on the benefits of the worker's performance to the organization. Then performance of a worker is evaluated based on its relevance to the organization’s objectives. Goal achievement is easily comparable across the employee’s performance (Nelson & Quick, 2012). Such a criterion is measured by determining the margin between the benefits of the task and the cost incurred in accomplishing the task.
In A1, the mostly employed sets of evaluation are amiability and attitude. Evaluating associate's amiability helps the company in singling out the best-suited employees to accomplish an assigned task amicably. Employees who are friendly employee have the tendency of having good interpersonal skills necessary to accomplish the assignment that require coordination and team play. A high level of unfriendliness, on the other hand, indicates hostility and negative attitudes challenging group work thereby hindering the attainment of organizational goals. Friendliness is paramount to a company because it initiates and entrenches the spirit of teamwork that eventually leads to improved results (Miner, 2011).
Tidiness ensures that the staff engages their daily ongoing in a clean, comfortable and healthy work environment. A tidy working environment is characterized by a good workstation layout to enable easy access and retrieval of important records and documents like memo and letters. Tidiness eliminates mishandling and destruction of records and maintains a good outlook and greatly saves on time and space otherwise wasted in accessing and arranging the file.
Assessing a worker's attitude plays a role in enabling the company identifies and understands the quality of work life. In most cases, staff's attitudes come down to the reward they get for their efforts in task performance (Stone & Marsden, 2001). A positive Attitude shows motivation among the employees and that they enjoy doing their job. Contrary attitude indicates lack of motivation, therefore, the company need to implement motivating efforts to change employee's attitudes positively towards work.
D. Role perceptions
In relation to an employee, motivation is the issue of role perceptions. The way an employee views the roles he or she undertakes while activity assignments influences employee behavior within an organization. It is evident that the employee views the role of the manager as taking responsibility of the activities and outcomes of the tasks under their control. Their role is to ensure that employees under their department attain the goals of the organization with the staff tasked to support the existing systems in the company (Adler & Gundersen, 2008). Hickling’s perception about the role of a manager is that they can address issues on their own. He did not expect that Tony could approach him for consultation. However, Hickling should have boldly addressed and amicably solves the issue with Tony instead of dismissing him away. The reason is that manager’s lookup to executives for guidance on matters related to organizational performance.
References
Adler, N. J., & Gundersen, A. (2008). International dimensions of organizational behavior. Mason, Ohio: Thomson/South-Western.
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Miner, J. B. (2011). Organizational behavior 6. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe.
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Schermerhorn, J. R. (2012). Organizational behavior. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.
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